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market-farming - Re: perennial weeds and deer damage

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  • From: Leigh <lh AT pressroom.com>
  • To: "market farming" <market-farming AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: perennial weeds and deer damage
  • Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 18:15:36 -0500


We are probably the all time experts on deer damage. We're trying to farm in the middle of a forest, on the west live several billionaires with a 20,000 acres forest with no hunting allowed and on the east are the rapidly approaching suburbs pushing the wildlife before it. We could sit out in our fields and shoot deer all day and we would still lose our crops.

We have tried just about everything and here is what works:

the two fences of different heights works reasonably well when the deer aren't really hungry but, for us, is cost prohibitive.

What works, for the summer when there is plenty for the deer to eat in the forest, is the peanut butter electric fence. We have 5 foot woven wire around our 5 acres of vegetables. On top of that we run electric fence ( the deer, of course can jump this from a standstill). Over the electric fence we put tinfoil with a healthy smear of peanut butter. The deer come up, lick the peanut butter and the shock sends them away.

But, it only takes one, or two deer to mow down a crop and this doesn't work come last September and October (or in April and May) when the deer get hungry

Last year, though, on one side of our vegetables, the side where the deer mostly entered, we put in a narrow fenced area that ran the entire length of the crop area and pastured several pigs. Something about the pigs (smell, size, sound) deterred the deer.
this was the only thing that worked in the fall when the deer got hungry. The deer would not enter from that direction until we took the pigs to the butcher.

This coming season we are putting in another 'pig pasture' on the other side. Since our vegetable fields are more or less a rectangle with our home on one end this will guard 3 sides. The unguarded side has been the one least attacked by the deer and I intend to put up extra peanut butter fence.

What hasn't worked
rotten egg mixture- maybe that day, or maybe that week, but it isn't fool proof and it only takes once.
dog - which breed is important. But sooner or later the deer and the dog get accustomed to each other. And a dog running through the vegetables causes a lot of damage.

human hair - see eggs

commercial repellant - see eggs

sitting out in the field with a rifle -that's a lot of nights to be out late and up early.

growing extra vegetable just for the deer (shareholders suggest this one) deer are like people and rats, their appetite knows no bounds.

growing vine crops around the edge of your field - this was suggested by someone on a list and kind of works. I think it depends on the vines. Pumpkins and winter squash don't really work. Come October deer will eat squash, and come late October they will eat squash leaves. Last year we put our sweet potato crops on the edge. the deer got in during the middle of the summer and ate the leaves from the vines, and once or twice caused a lot of damage (they seem to really like young sweet potato leaves and not old ones) but they tended not to cut across the sp crop area and instead went around the edges. This mean the fall Chinese cabbage and broccoli we had growing next to it got munched on the row ends. (deer lover broccoli, right behind spinach and just in front of string bean leaves).

A radio out in the field that goes on and off all night long - this actually works for several weeks until the deer get accustomed to the sound. We've tried changing stations and putting the radio on a timer. No good.

One year the only peppers the deer didn't eat the buds from (yes, deer prefer sweet pepper buds over hot peppers, but they will eat hot pepper buds) were the ones growing next to the dill. We thought we had discovered something and the next year planted dill around the edge of the fields. The deer loved the dill, one day I went out and there wasn't a dill plant left on the place. it turned out it was just the dill smell that masked the peppers. They prefer peppers over dill. but prefer dill over tomato plants (we have discovered a real hierarchy of deer taste. A deer will travel miles to eat spinach but have to be desperate to much a tomato plant).

There are probably a lot of other things we have tried and I'm missing here. Again, the most effective all year deterrence has proven to be pigs.




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